The troubleshooting and fault management capabilities of network management software are enhanced by the ability of the software to provide easily discernable and comprehendible information reflecting the current state of the network. To this end, network management software packages may include a graphical user interface (GUI) which provides a visual representation of the network topology, and other management information. As the complexity of computer networks has increased, the capabilities of network management software packages to display information in a user-friendly and useful manner have become strained and inadequate.
Difficulty in representing the state of, and traffic traversing, a network is particularly prominent in connection-oriented networks, such as ATM networks, as a complex arrangement of calls may exist at any particular moment between the various nodes that comprised the network. Particularly in large networks, which may include hundreds or even thousands of routers and switches, the representation of network information in an easily discernible manner can prove difficult. Calls within a connection-oriented network may also be very dynamic and transient in nature, which in itself present numerous monitoring challenges. As ATM networks are increasingly being employed to carry large volumes of critical, high-speed traffic, it has become essential that some effective method be provided for displaying and analyzing the flow of data in the network.
The emergence of hybrid networks, which may support a number of protocols, such as ATM, Ethernet, Token-Ring and FDDI, has also complicated the monitoring and determination of network management information. Specifically, as a number of protocols are implemented in such hybrid networks, tools for representing traffic on such networks are challenged to provide information which allows a network manager easily to locate and identify a network fault. An increasingly common form of hybrid network provides an ATM subnetwork (or backbone) over which a number of "legacy" local area networks (LANs) communicate. One way of operating such a hybrid network utilizes LAN Emulation (LANE) protocols, which can be used to define a number of Emulated LANs (ELANs) within the hybrid network. This form of the hybrid network provides an example of a network that combines both connection-oriented and connectionless protocols.